On Feb 21 and 22, Melanie, Patrick, Kathleen and I put in an average of 14 hours each day hanging the lights. As I mentioned during Night of the Living Dead, in this space, hanging lights is not an easy job. It means an average of two trips up a 16' extension ladder for each light. For RENT, I used 38 conventional fixtures, 4 moving lights, and 7 LED PAR lights, plus 4 LED lights on the band and the LED strips in the two windows, plus a snow machine. 53 lights sounds manageable until you take into account that 15 of them require not only hanging, but you must cable non-dimmed power AND a DMX control cable to each one. So the ceiling is a mass of cables that I do not look forward to striking.
All day and evening on Friday, 2/21 was spent on those first 15 lights. I wanted to get all of the cables strung through the rafters before hanging conventionals. I did not want to have to fight around all of the other lights to pull cables. By the time we went home, they were up and the LEDs were all working but the moving fixtures were giving me fits. I couldn't get them to talk to the control console...but more on that later. While we were hanging lights, Kathleen and Patrick's significant other, Shelley took care of details like putting a black skirt around the moon and such.
Saturday, we began hanging conventionals, which even with more, takes less time. For the most part they hang and plug in at the same location on the ceiling, so it is a matter of moving from hanging point to hanging point, hoist a fixture, pre-gelled, clamp and focus. We had all of those up before dinner. While Patrick and I were doing the lights, Kathleen and Melanie were attacking the set with Christmas lights...about a thousand of them. :) The set is outlined with them, mimicking a skyline of high-rise buildings. After finishing lights, we then stretched another 1200 across the ceiling above the seats.
I am very happy with how I was able to get rich, saturated colors out of the LED and moving fixtures. This adds real depth and emotion to the staging.
Here is one picture that was taken by Kevin Corpuz during cue-to-cue. It was already shared on Facebook, so here you go...
Earlier last week, scenic artist Sharon Russell and I did some painting touch-ups and gave the floor a coat of black in anticipation of a starry sky. Last Friday, Gary Karasek and I arrived at the theater at 9AM with two boxes filled with all of the paint colors that had been used in the shop for initial painting. All of the edges of platforms and walls were touched up and blended. Then the floor was painted...a blue-gray haze around the moon, spattering of colors like distant stars and then, where the spatters were too big, they got expanded with rays to become bright stars. Painting wrapped up a bit before noon. Melanie got off work at noon and met me at the theater at 1PM and we began programming light cues.
I had VERY limited experience with LED lights, using them on the band for NOTLD. But in that show, there were four little DJ lights all set to produce the same color. Adding them in was really nothing. This is a whole different scale. I wanted to be able to use each of the 7 LED lights independently so that I could get gradations of color on stage for certain songs. In fact for La Vie at the end of act one and Seasons of Love at the start of act two, each is a different color, creating a rainbow. That requires that each light have each of its settings independently programmed for each cue. For this show, we are somewhere over 250 cues (I am afraid to actually count them...I don't want to know)
I had never touched a moving light before picking lights up from Mark Shilling for this show. I did not originally intend to use a moving light for the show, but when I started looking at all of the little special lights that I needed to accent actors for a particular song, I was going to exceed the number of dimmers. So, I turned to a moving light, used essentially as a re-focusable spotlight. I can position it in a previous cue and then I comes on just like any other light, catching the accent that I need. Then moved for the next accent. I can change their color...this was a good solution. EXCEPT that I know nothing of using them or controlling them. Add to that, the light board at our theater is not particularly suited to moving lights and I bit off a bit more than I knew. THEN, Shilling threw in a pair of LED moving head wash lights. These have 12 channels of function that has to be set each time they are used!
Each of my 250 cues was taking minutes to set and record because of all of the variables between LED and moving lights.I finally finished programming the show at 4:30AM Saturday morning. I didn't even run through the show and I had cue to cue with the cast in 8 hours and no sleep. Kathleen had fallen asleep in the first row of the auditorium at about 1AM. So, we just turned off the lights, locked the door and left. I got about 3 hours of sleep and was back at the theater at 10:30AM to meet Gabe and give him the cues and it was a chance to step through and see if I had any surprises. Amazingly, there were very few errors.
We ran cue to cue in 3 hours for a 2.5 hour show. NOT BAD! I ended up with about 50 notes from Scott to fix...mostly more light here, more contrast there, longer fade time here, and a few moving light positions that were off a bit. WOW!
The cast rolled out at 5PM on Saturday and the graffiti artists rolled in. They sprayed for 3 hours until 8:15PM, when we cleaned up and headed to the Rep. We had tickets to see Other Desert Cities and there was NO other time to go. Another LONG-ASS day! Home at mid-night.
This afternoon, I will head to the theater and clean up those cues, then sit through rehearsal making one more round of notes. After rehearsal, I will pick up those few items and call RENT ready! On to Anne Frank!
See you at the show! R
